North Country At Work

Two men transferring sap from collection buckets to pails. Photograph by James Fynmore. Boonville, NY. 1965. Courtesy of the Adirondack Experience.

Maple sugar house. Two men stand beside a wooden gathering tank on a specially built low wagon being pulled by a team of horses. The wagon is on a mound at the end of the sugarhouse so the sap can be unloaded downhill into the building’s storage tank. Photograph by James Fynmore. 1965. Boonville, NY. […]

Man pouring sap into a pail. Another man stands behind him on a sap gathering trailer pulled by a team of horses that holds a large wooden sap gathering tank. Photograph by James Fynmore. 1965. Boonville, NY. Courtesy of the Adirondack Experience.

Sugar Camp in North Creek. Man (right) holds sap pails with basic yoke. Boy stands under eaves, dog on wood stack. 1907. North Creek, NY. Donated by William Waddell, courtesy of the Adirondack Experience.

Man pours sap through a funnel into a metal pipe that transports it directly to gathering tubs or the evaporator. Operations of the Horseshoe Forestry Company. Photograph by George W. Baldwin. 1901. Piercefield, NY. Courtesy of the Adirondack Experience.

Men are emptying sap from the gathering tank on a bobsled into vats; sap is then piped into the sugarhouse and directly into the evaporators. Operations of the Horseshoe Forestry Company. Photograph by George W. Baldwin. 1901. Piercefield, NY. Courtesy of the Adirondack Experience.

Man standing on a horse-drawn sled carrying two rectangular sap gathering tanks. Second man standing further ahead. Operations of the Horseshoe Forestry Company. Photograph by George W. Baldwin. 1901. Piercefield, NY. Courtesy of the Adirondack Experience.

Man carrying a specially made sap gathering pail (tapers from bottom to top to avoid spills), standing beside two maple trees with sap buckets hanging from them. Operations of the Horseshoe Forestry Company. Photograph by George W. Baldwin. 1901. Piercefield, NY. Courtesy of the Adirondack Experience.

Looking down a railroad track at a group of men piping maple sap from a gathering tank on a horse-drawn bobsled to a storage vat in a sugarhouse. Bobsled is on hill to left with large pipe passing over railroad tracks to sugarhouse.  One man holding clipboard.  Racks of sap buckets or lids on ground […]

Interior of one of the Horse Shoe Forestry Company’s four sugarhouses. Five men tending the patent evaporator pans developed by John Rivet and James Hill and financed by Abbot Augustus Low.  Sap enters each evaporator from the large pipe on right controlled by a float mechanism on side of each evaporator. Operations of the Horseshoe […]